Nightmares
by Kinsie
Summary: When nightmares and insomnia plague the inhabitants of Grimmauld Place, the kitchen becomes an unexpected refuge.


**Author's Note:** Hello everyone out there in reader land! This is my first attempt at a Ginny/Sirius fic and I don't know if I succeeded in what I was after as I wrote this around one this morning. Please let me know if you enjoyed it or if there were aspects to it that need work. Thank you for reading and have a lovely day!

 **Disclaimer:** I do not, nor have I ever had any sort of claim to the wonderful world and characters that J.K. Rowling has provided for our imaginations to run amok with.

The hallway was dark and foreboding as Ginny walked down it. Everything seemed to be shifting though and she felt dizzier than she had in ages; the dreams did that to her. Ginny's vision was distorted as she meandered to the kitchen in Grimmauld Place. She had made the trip so many times this summer that she did not even stumble over the uneven floorboard anymore. It felt like a blink and she was sitting at the table with toast and a glass of water in front of her. While the water definitely helped steady her mind, the toast did nothing but further turn her stomach.

"Are you aware that it is three in the morning?" a voice asked from the doorway causing her to jump. Normally, she was not one to scare easily, but everything about the night had her unsettled.

"Are you aware that I don't give a damn?" Ginny's emotions were spinning already and people barging into her solitude had a tendency to make her a bit testy.

"No need to get touchy, just wondered why you were out of bed," Sirius took the seat opposite her at the table.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to snap at you," Ginny offered him some of her toast as a peace offering which he accepted and began munching on. When she offered him the other slice he looked at her and said, "Are you sure you wouldn't like it, you're looking a bit peaky at the moment. I'd fix that before the morning or your mum will have a fit."

"I'm not hungry right now, thanks," Ginny avoided the comment about her pale skin and her mum's intrusive nature.

The pair sat in silence for a short while with the youngest Weasley lost in thought and Sirius studying her as though she was a problem set that needed solving. He took in how she traced the grain of the old wooden table and the varying flashes of emotion that spread like lightning across her eyes. For her part, Ginny was oblivious to the older man sitting at the table. She was far too intent on sorting herself out before attempting to sleep again.

"Was it a nightmare?" Sirius finally broke the silence that had settled around the pair.

"Was what a nightmare?" the slight girl questioned, seeming to shrink in a bit on herself as she spoke.

"You don't strike me as someone who would willingly lose some much needed rest, what with all the cleaning you lot are doing these days. That being said, I can't think of very many reasons that you would want to leave the comfort of your bed for these hard arse chairs. The most likely scenario I could think of was that a nightmare got your up," Sirius expounded on his previous question.

"It doesn't matter. Suffice to say, I'm up now and not likely to go to bed any time soon. Why are you awake?" Ginny rose to refill her glass of water and grabbed another for Sirius as she was up anyways.

"Insomnia actually, I don't sleep often," Sirius said lightly as Ginny placed his glass in front of him.

"Why can't you sleep?" Ginny asked thoughtlessly. Had she taken a moment to think about who she was talking to, it would have been apparent that it was a road of discourse she did not wish to travel down.

"Some rather unpleasant memories have a habit of cropping up when one's mind is not occupied with other things. That being said, I think you know that just as well as anyone in this house," Sirius had seen the girl enter the kitchen nearly every morning in the early hours of the morning the entire time the Weasleys had been staying at headquarters; clearly, something was keeping her awake.

"Memories only have power over someone when they allow them to," Ginny repeated something Dumbledore had told her in her second year when the panic attacks started.

"The old codger's gotten to you too I see," Sirius had often heard the phrase from Albus. On the surface the logic was quite sound, but internalizing the message did not seem to be working very well. His words had the desired effect though and Ginny snorted a bit into her glass.

"He means well," She allowed before continuing, "In the daylight, the words make things better, but at night there's nothing between you and the memories except fear." Her words sobered Sirius.

"What do you fear, Ginny?" He asked quietly. The tone of the room had changed and there was a palpable tension between them.

"I fear the darkness inside of me, I fear Tom, and I fear the love I harbor for him," Ginny's face was bleak as she brought her deepest secret to the forefront of the conversation.

She had fallen in love with Tom Riddle at age eleven and thus far had very little luck with shaking her feelings. During the day, she could pretend that it was Harry whom she pined for. It was a simpler solution than facing reality. All this she told to Sirius along with the explanation of her first year at Hogwarts and the panic attacks and scarily lifelike nightmares that had plagued her since.

"I feel so elated when I see him and then I think of the death and madness and I just don't care because all I can feel in the dream is warmth that he isn't gone. Tom Riddle was a murderer and a madman and he's back and I can't bring myself to hate him properly which scares me more than anything else in this world."

Sirius took her hand across the table and listened as she poured her heart out and listened to the horror of her experience with the Chamber and tried not to allow any of the negative emotions he was feeling to cross his face. If she felt judged she would just clam up again and go back to her nightmares of the boy who almost killed her. When she had spent herself with words, Ginny insisted on hearing his memories of dead friends and dementors meshed with the entrapment of twelve years of innocence. Being pushed the edge of sanity by the knowledge that the true killers of his best friend walked free unscathed while he was rotting away unable to move beyond the bars of his cell.

By the time both had exhausted their nightmares, the sun was rising and it was time to begin a new day at Grimmauld Place.

Ginny felt the sun on her eyelids and the pressure of an arm curled around her waist. She snuggled back into the embrace of the man beside her under the covers and thought more on the dream she had had. It was a memory of her fourteen year old self and the unlikely friendship that she and Sirius Black had forged together. Through the next ten years of fighting Tom and rebuilding the world around them, they had been able to move beyond the memories and fear that plagued them both. No longer did Sirius wander the halls of Grimmauld Place to escape the horrible feeling of claustrophobia and Ginny had a better love to cherish than the twisted version that Tom had allotted her.

The feeling of a butterfly kiss on the back of her neck brought Ginny back to reality and her impossible fiancé who had realized she was just as awake as he was. She turned in his arms and gave him a warm good morning kiss.

"What was that for?" he asked, pleasantly surprised at such gentle treatment from his usually grouchy and decidedly anti-morning witch.

"For being my best friend," Ginny gave Sirius another lingering kiss and suddenly they were both more awake than they had been a moment before.

"Love you, Gin," Sirius brushed his calloused fingers across her and gave her a good morning that had decidedly silly grins planted on their faces for the rest of the day.


End file.
